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Chris Weidman is the latest fighter to sustain injury, forcing him to withdraw from a scheduled bout

By Joshua Molina

The injury bug continues to curse the UFC and the sport of mixed martial arts.

Chris Weidman, who has been running his mouth for months calling out Anderson Silva, injured his shoulder training and is out of his Dec. 29 fight against Tim Boetsch.

Injuries are killing big fights in a way far worse than it ever has in boxing. Some critics believe injured fighters are more willing to pull out of fights now that UFC provides accidental injury insurance coverage for fighters during training.

With Weidman close to a middleweight title shot, he probably would not want to risk losing by stepping into the cage injured.

Whatever the reason, the injury just pushes Weidman further out of the title picture, at a time when UFC boss Dana White appears willing to sacrifice the middleweight division in 2013 for two big UFC paydays between Silva and GSP and Silva and Jones.

After fcfighter.com broke the story of Gegard Mousasi planning to join the UFC, Mike Kyle spoke out saying he plans to fight Mousasi in January, before Mousasi heads to UFC.

These two were supposed to fight twice, but both times the fight was scrapped because of injuries.

Mousasi said he wants to fight Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in the UFC and is even considering dropping down to middleweight.

Henderson, 42, was on the verge of capping an amazing career comeback with a UFC Light Heavyweight Championship title shot against Jon Jones.

Then he injured his knee, didn’t immediately report the injury, killing a Pay Per View main event and eventual entire card.

Now, he will fight Machida, a dangerous striker, who stylistically poses a huge threat to Hendo, who at this stage of his career is one-dimensional, relying mostly on his awesome right hand to win big fights.

Henderson will likely never get a title shot again if he loses to Machida. So close, yet so far for the MMA icon.

posted by JoshuaM @ 3:56 pm

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